The reaction to the book has been so gratifying this past week. I’ve heard from dozens of people, white and black, who have their own stories of how Neoslavery touched the lives of their families. I’ll start posting some of those messages over the next few days.
A blog at NPR.com connected to my appearance on Talk of the Nation drew a long and energetic exchange. Some of the posters were historians wanting to make sure that other scholars’ research into issues in my book weren’t overlooked. Below is the response I posted to that traffic:
“To Kathleen Murray and Alex Lichtenstein, I hope you’ll read “Slavery by Another Name” and see that it energetically acknowledges many scholars, such as Pete Daniel (“who wrote the seminal work on twentieth-century peonage”), Mary Ellen Curtin (“no work rivals the research” for prior to 1900), Jack Bergstresser, the industrial archeologist who first postulated the identities of those buried in the great unmmarked burial grounds on the edge of Birmingham–each of whom gave me valued advice during the seven years of work on this project.
But the book also expands beyond past research, offers a reinterpretation of events over a much longer period of time and wider geography, and demonstrates how this history directly ties to the present. It is unapologetically a challenge to the views of some conventional historians. It begins with an analysis of how the new slavery was rooted in specific events before the Civil War and follows the chain of events through the end of World War II, a full century of social history, and a period I argue we should call the “Age of Neoslavery.” What most distinguishes my book, though, is that it confronts historical realities that few U.S. scholars have been able to reconcile themselves to–that huge numbers of black Americans across the South were re-enslaved through interlocking mechanisms deep into the 20th century and that these were not inevitable or accidental. Southern blacks were not merely abused, politically deprived or inconvenienced, as history has taught most of us. They were enslaved into coerced labor, by fair reckoning of the evidence. Some historians and researchers have inadvertantly minimized this reality, partly by analysis that failed to see the interconnection between forms of neoslavery, partly through a failure to tap untouched evidence in courthouses across the South, partly because this interpretation challenges some pillars of American mythology. Some have also accepted a presumption that it is impossible to re-animate the lives of the impoverished and illiterate millions of African-Americans drawn into neoslavery–or establish the severity of the limits imposed on their lives. My book builds upon the extraordinary past work of many scholars whom I enormously admire. But it rejects any suggestion that because slavery as a legally defined condition no longer existed, we cannot call the resubjugation of these African-American families what it truly was: a new slavery. And it is simply untrue that we cannot reconstruct the lives of those who were crushed by these events–and the vast scale of the injuries they received.
Historians should not be unnerved that this largely unknown past is being shared with a broad audience. Based on the exchanges here and dozens of emails I have received in recent days, few Americans understand these events–whether the interpretation offered by most scholars or mine. This is not a topic about which everything has already been said. The millions of neoslaves abandoned by history deserve many more books yet.”
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I have just read your piece in the Wall Street Journal and ordered the book to read. You have done a great service by giving some of the victims of this horrific practice the chance to once again have a name and a voice. And, by making your readers reexamine our own history and that of our country. I recently heard Henry Louis Gates in an interview with Tavis Smiley say that the roots of racism are economic. But where are the roots of such unbelievable cruelty and inhumanity? And, in a way the more shocking revelation that it was only the spectre of world war that moved Roosevelt to intervene to stop these crimes. If there had been no World War, would this neoslavery still exist?
Can America ever be allowed to overcome this legacy or will it be necessary to see the country torn apart by it. I do not believe books such as yours, despite their historical significance, can ever help to heal the deep racial wounds that afflict our country. America’s race hustlers use books like yours as fuses to enrage the black community and permits them to exploit racism rather than heal it.
I’ve just inadvertantly stumbled upon the title this morning and read your most recent blog posting. It never made sense to me that slavery “disappeared” with the end of the Civil War, as we learned in school. It was a complex system, not a single independent entity. If you remove a piece of a system, the system itself will reconstitute that role in another form or forms. But, I thought I must be wrong to think so, since no one ever wrote or spoke about it. I’d mistakenly assumed something that serious would have been trumpeted. Are we still engaged in even more polished vestiges of what you discovered or has there been significant systemic change? What’s been carried forward? Obviously, I’ve got to read the book
Thank
The sentiments expressed by Mr. Abruzzese above are so wrong-headed to me. Suppression of history, among other harms, aids and abets American terrorists, such as those tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center (www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/intrep.jsp). Conversely, truthful (or as truthful as humanly possible) historical accounting is indispensable to our understanding of how people and societies behave. And the clearer that understanding is, the better able we are to govern our future–one better than our past.
I want to thank you for your work. Thank you for all of our ancestors who have died amidst the lies and the silence of corporate and national greed.I used to wonder why my late maternal grandmother would say, “I’ll never go back to Georgia!”. I used to wonder why my folks in the Delta would say, “why you wanna know? leave that alone.” It’s a painful past – wounds that go deep into the history and psyche of a people, a people who thought they were going to gain their freedom only to be disappointed and subjected to another kind of atrocity. Again, I want to thank you for exposing this – so that we can hear it – discuss it – analyze it – learn from it – tell our children the truth about it – and maybe we can heal from it.
Doug, It was a rare privilege to meet you last week at the AJC. Thanks for your amazing, eye-opening work. It will probably take a second reading for me to grasp all that is in it, but it will be worth the time.
I look forward to reading the book. I listened to you today on Sirius and could not believe what I was hearing. I am just shocked and amazed that you were able to write this book. I think a documentary or movie needs to be produced. Everyone needs to know the truth.
Mr. Abruzzese’s voice rings similiar to that voice of those tragically ancient minds who condone the enslavement of freemen. Mr. Abruzzese and his sentiments would be familiar to those who gave similiar justification for the crimes committed by the Third reich in Nazi germany.
Douglas, your excellent book shines a bright light into a dark corner of human behavior. The roots of neoslavery you describe spring from prejudice and ethnocentrism, and economics and politics. Good economic and political outcomes to the perpetrators helps stimulate and ‘institutionalize’ the practices described by you. Prejudice and ethnocentrism enables us to ‘dehumanize’ and demonize others. The U.S. government condoned and supported policies that created economic and social neoslavery well after WWII in the form of, for example, real estate and banking practices. These practices made it difficult for certain minorities to build economic wealth based on real estate when compared to white Americans in similar economic circumstances; thus limiting minority members’ ability to become self-employed, as well as supporting a continuation of geographically segrated society. Slavery is alive and well throughout much of the world today in the form of indentured workers, child ’soldiers,’ kidnapped sex workers, etc. It respects no lines of color or ethnicity. It is a disease of the human soul that reflects a failure of morals and imagination. The cure? Respect yourself, and then treat others as you would like to be treated.
Thank you so much Mr. Blackmon for giving voice to all those men and women who endured this “re-enslavement” that many of us today find difficult to reconcile with the notion that we live in a “democracy”. I often recall the stories of my father about the harsh life of sharecropping in Southwest Georgia during the 1920s and 30s. I think for years I have had an outline of what life was like for blacks during that era, but you did so much with your book to help color it all in for me. I am just beginning the book, but from the very first page I found it absolutely compelling. Without yet having finished the book, I am encouraging friends and colleagues to get your book and to host book discussions/parties in our homes to help facilitate the racial healing so many of our leaders talk about. Again, THANKS !!!
You made an assertion that the involuntary slavery of African-Americans ended during the 40’s. I beg to differ. I met an “individual” from S.C. whom was interned at such a camp during the 70’s or 80’s in N.C. He escaped and later returned to S.C. He would further state that upon his return to S.C., during the early morning hours, he spotted the “slave catchers” from the camp looking once again for unwitting prospects to take back to N.C. Until I heard you discuss this particular fact on the Tavis Smiley Show, I didn’t believe it. But now I do. He told me this “now verified truth” last year in 2007. Upon my return to S.C., their have been a myriad of “hidden truths” that have been unearthed. Keep up the good work.
I have just finished listening to your talk, Slavery by Another Name, given on 3-31-08 and rebroadcast today 6-14-08 on c-span. I am so thankful you did this work although sickening as it must have been to you it was as I see it a revelation ment to be for our nation’s road to healling and health. My we all ask for God’s mercy, forgiveness and strength to do the work we must continue to do.
I have just spent the last twenty four hours reading your book. Today, on Father’s day, I have regaled my children and a number of friends with the new historical truth…It is always exciting to learn new twists to the story of the world, but it is horrible for America and American historians to have perpetuated the myths of the south and of Thomas Dixon, as fact…it is even more horrible that America allowed neo-slavery to develop and be maintained. I guess they didn’t know about this slavery in the south…as the Germans never knew about the extermination camps! Let us see what reaction this work gets, it took us years before the destruction of Native Americans was admitted into curriculums…and this may be as tough a part of American history as there can be to tell.
To George Abruzzese i leave you this quote from George Santayana ” Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ” Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Can you tell the Jews to forget the Holocaust? If you are ashamed of the past, face it and accept it in order to overcome your shame and you will be free……
wow. so informative. keep up the good work.
While these deplorable facts remain to haunt us, Rest assured that many whites as well as free blacks were involved in the similar situations. My father was on the river bridge in 1910 at Palos Mine when the explosion killed 90 + people including a mailman and another small boy on the same bridge. My father went to work in the mines at twelve years of age. He probably was employed here also. So many of the men had come from England to Pennsylvania to B’ham
to more of the same old same old they had in the dank pits in England. They also were victims of the Molly McGuires who followed them here. I think your research and literary work is of immense value,but while off the subject, the other participants regardless of race were victims also. I have original news reports of segregated morgues at the site. Black women were allowed to identify their relatives but it was considered improper for the white women to identify their mates.